Category Archives: Flt Lt John W Harder

Day 9 – Wednesday 7th June A walk around Estry This morning we spent time looking around the village of Estry as Colin wanted to take photographs of the locations of damaged and destroyed Churchill tanks following the battle to liberate the village as he needed this for his war gaming group and his military […]

Day 07 – Thursday 2nd June Chasing down John Harder (part 2) After breakfast, we went back to the Mairie in Évron to see Livre d’Or & John Harder’s signature for ourselves – it was great being able to see a piece of “real history” that I had a direct connection to. Then, as it […]

Day 06 – Wednesday 1st June Chasing John Harder Today would have a focus on tracing John Harder’s return visit to Normandy in the 1970s when he was presented with a medallion by the mayor of Évron which was the main town nearest to where he parachuted into Normandy from his stricken Spitfire. We had […]

North, south or both Another hot day dawned. Given what the weather forecast had been for this week when we were back in the UK, we had been exceptionally lucky with, largely, sunny hot days… Today, we were heading south to visit M Michel Filoche who, you may recall, owned the farm where Flt Lt […]

German Military Cemetery at Marigny Initially, we’d planned to use this day checking out again Ray Elledge’s crash site where we would have dug up some of the metal. However, as this had now been confirmed as not a crash site, we decided to do something different and decided to head off to Coutances as […]

Pubs and brewpubs – that’s a different start for us… not! We started off and first went to Banbury where we had lunch in a Hook Norton pub – The Roebuck. Hook Norton being a brewery that neither Glyn nor I had had beers from for a long time. We then continued to Aylesbury which […]

Just received the sad news that Phil Harder, brother of Flt Lt John Harder, passed away on 16th April. Phil’s Obituary is here: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/startribune/obituary.aspx?n=philip-m-harder&pid=164383627&fhid=4454 This photo of Phil in Coast Guard uniform was supplied by Bobbie Harder (one of John Harder’s daughters & Phil’s neices) I spoke to Phil a couple of years ago to […]

Preparations for the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg Congratulations to Tabb Firchau & the team at FreeFly Cinema for their success in the upcoming film remembering the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. This three-day battle changed the course of American history. In 1863 George Meade’s Union army defeated Robert E. Lee’s Confederate […]

Each month the Manchester Military History Society has a speaker on a military related subject followed by a discussion around that subject or related topics. On Tuesday 9th April (if you can make it!), I’ll be delivering the lecture for the Society focusing on “the story so far…” In 2004, Colin Foster began an investigation […]

And about b****y time, too!! Last year, the Bomber Command Memorial was unveiled by Her Majesty the Queen in London & now, on today’s news, it would appear that Veterans who served on Arctic convoys and in Bomber Command during World War II are to be recognised for their bravery and service with a new […]